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Color Management: Do I Need This?

Lesson 9 from: The Professional Photographer’s Digital Workflow

Michael Clark

Color Management: Do I Need This?

Lesson 9 from: The Professional Photographer’s Digital Workflow

Michael Clark

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Lesson Info

9. Color Management: Do I Need This?

Lessons

Class Trailer
1

Class Introduction

08:17
2

Shooting Workflow: Set-up The Camera

15:43
3

Shooting Workflow: Histograms and Exposure

18:14
4

Shooting Workflow: Sensor Cleaning

32:50
5

Overview of Color Management

17:31
6

Color Management: Monitor

11:49
7

Color Management: Workspace

03:40
8

Color Management: Monitor Calibration

25:52
9

Color Management: Do I Need This?

03:42
10

Introduction to Lightroom®

05:44
11

Download & Import Images With Lightroom®

06:32
12

Lightroom® Preferences

09:09
13

Six Ways to Speed-up Lightroom®

14:02
14

To DNG or Not to DNG?

06:47
15

A Logical Editing Process in Lightroom®

08:56
16

File & Folder Naming in Lightroom®

08:39
17

Batch Renaming in Lightroom®

05:51
18

Entering Metadata in Lightroom®

03:35
19

Managing Images in Lightroom®

07:39
20

Introduction to the Develop Module in Lightroom®

04:45
21

Lightroom® Develop Module

24:01
22

Sharpening, Chromatic Aberration & Vignetting in Lightroom®

12:34
23

Graduated Filters & Spot Tool in Lightroom®

09:59
24

Converting images to Black & White in Lightroom®

13:01
25

Creating Panoramas in Lightroom

07:46
26

Creating HDR Images in Lightroom®

09:29
27

Lightroom® to Photoshop® Workflow

07:04
28

Export Images to Photoshop®

08:54
29

Finalizing Images in Photoshop®: Basic Adjustments

36:49
30

Finalizing Images in Photoshop®: Retouching

15:16
31

Finalizing Images in Photoshop®: Saving Master Files

09:45
32

Make Fine Art Prints: The Cost

15:37
33

Make Fine Art Prints: Ink Jet Printers

05:23
34

Make Fine Art Prints: Ink Jet Papers

10:14
35

Make Fine Art Prints: Understand ICC Profiles

08:44
36

Make Fine Art Prints: Sharpen Image

18:26
37

Printing From Photoshop®

09:11
38

Printing From Lightroom®

05:07
39

Compare Monitor to Physical Prints

06:33
40

Printing Black & White Image

09:10
41

Extended Workflow: Back Up Images

35:19
42

Extended Workflow: Storage Options

18:32
43

Extended Workflow: Archiving Images

15:55
44

Submitting images to Clients

28:32
45

Prepping Images for Social Media

08:44
46

Alternative Workflows

08:49
47

Final Q&A

19:56

Lesson Info

Color Management: Do I Need This?

So do I really need all of this? We've kind of answered that question already. You know as I said take what you want. At the very minimum I would say buy you know... Maybe it's the i1 Studio, maybe it's the i1 Studio Display Pro or i1 Display Pro. Buy a colorimeter, a spectrophotometer are what these are called. Monitor calibration device. Calibrate your monitor minimum once a month or at the most once every two months 'cause your monitor will drift a little bit. Do as much as you can with your work environment. You know if you have giant windows and there's no other place to work it up that's just how you deal with it. You know you're not gonna blackout your giant windows with the gorgeous view of the bay. If you're working in the Space Needle you know you've got lots of light coming in. If you're a photojournalist, there's photojournalists around the world working on laptops in a cafe God knows where with whatever light they have and they're doing the best they can. But what you may ...

not realize is when they send those pictures back to New York Times or back to Washington Post or whoever, you know Agence France-Presse there's somebody there that's checking their color on an actual calibrated monitor even though it's being printed on toilet paper in the newspaper you know which is not super high-end paper. So there's somebody still checking it in the professional world for photojournalism which you may or may not expect or know about. But, you know, do the best you can is what it comes down to. And if you're just putting stuff online if that's all your clients are online you know this might... This is probably all you need to do. Having a nice monitor is great, really helps. You know I as you'll see I spend a lot more time probably on my images really moving sliders and stuff than a lot of people actually do. For me it takes 20 to 30 minutes per image to really dial it into a really high degree. It depends on how much time I have. That's my clientele. I'm not a photojournalist in terms of shooting and then having to get those images out an hour later. So that's, we can talk about that workflow but that's a little different than what I'm doing. So understand this is all fine tuned to what I'm doing too. If you're a wedding photographer and you have to shoot 1200 images and process 1200 images before the end of the week, oh my gosh you can't spend a half hour on every image. But you're probably making prints and maybe you're just sticking at sRGB mode and that can streamline it so you don't have to... You might still wanna fancy monitor though 'cause these can be put into sRGB mode not just AdobeRGB. So it depends on what you're doing and your experience. Are your prints looking great? Well then don't worry. If you're having trouble with color management then you might really look at this. Get a monitor calibration device. I've said it before but if you're doing a lot of printing, dial into color management it's gonna save you thousands of dollars. In paper and ink alone. You will pay for your own monitor within the first six months if you print every week. So, as I've said earlier this is all, 'cause we're gonna be looking at color the rest of this class. It's critical that we have this dialed in. Pissing into the wind there. (laughs) You know just a little colorful metaphor to tell you how critical this is and if you're not doing any color management at all like oh man, whoa you know you might calibrate your monitor and then go back and find out you need to rework up a good chunk of images. Maybe, maybe not depends on how lucky you are.

Class Materials

Bonus Materials with Purchase

Workflow Outline

Bonus Materials with RSVP

The Professional Photographers Digital Workflow Ebook Sample

Ratings and Reviews

a Creativelive Student
 

Michael is a true professional and readily explains all of the nitty gritty issues of a photographer's digital workflow, including important things like Color Management, Lightroom workflows, Printing, and more. He is eager to answer your questions and has a thorough knowledge (after all, he worked with the original engineers at Adobe and wrote a book on it) and passion that he loves to share. He can get way deep into the subject, which I found fascinating. You can tell Michael has great experience in teaching and also likes to learn from his students. He is very authentic, honest, and direct. I highly recommend this class, and look forward to another one of Michael's courses in the future!

a Creativelive Student
 

This is an excellent course. It reinforced what I already knew and enhanced my spotty skills with new knowledge. I really like Michael's explanation of saving the document for print and web and the importance of doing these differently. Using the histogram to show this was terrific. Each session there is some valuable gem.

Elizabeth Harrigan
 

This class is fantastic and is just what I was looking for! The teacher knows the subject WELL and he makes it understandable and easy to follow along. In each segment, he gets right to the point explaining just enough content to make it understandable. He doesn't waste your time. I highly recommend this class. It's the best tech class I have watched on Creative Live.

Student Work

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